Olive, believing Ruth to be with her friend, had drawn closer to the guide to listen to some bit of information that he was struggling to impart to Mrs. Grant. While Ruth, thinking that Olive was discharging her task, and finding Dick Grant and Frieda engaging in one of their frequent quarrels, had interposed herself between them.
It was at this time that Jack, wearier than she cared to confess, sat down on one of the steps beyond the Arch of Titus, descending toward the Coliseum. For the moment a cloud had passed half over the moon, making the ancient ruin before her appear more gigantic and mysterious. The next instant a figure seated itself beside her and Captain Madden's voice spoke:
"You think you don't care for poetry, Miss Jack, but surely tonight is made for poetry, or poetry is made for tonight. Do you know these lines of Byron's in Childe Harold?"
Captain Madden moved nearer the girl so that he might see into her face. Then he pointed toward the magical scene close by.
"A ruin—yet what a ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd,
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is near'd:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, men, have reft away.
"But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night breeze waves along the air
The garland forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,
Then in the magic circle rise the dead;
Heroes have trod this spot—'tis on their dust ye tread.
"'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls,—the world.'"
Jack made no answer for a moment. Then she said quietly, "It is a beautiful description; thank you for repeating it to me." She did not feel in the mood for talking tonight. The world was too beautiful and too strange. Here was she, Jacqueline Ralston, a girl raised on a ranch in far-off Wyoming, in the ancient city of Rome. And Captain Madden, the friend near her, why should a man so much older and wiser and with so great a knowledge of the world that even Rome itself did not seem unfamiliar to him, feel an interest in her? She was neither beautiful nor clever like Olive and Jean. Yet Jack, though not twenty, was woman enough to realize that Captain Madden liked her best.
The next instant she started to get up when, placing his hand on her arm, her companion held her back.
"I don't want to speak to you too soon," he whispered. "I don't wish to hurry or frighten you. But you must know why I have so longed to be with you alone for a few minutes tonight."
"Please," Jack faltered.
And then, suddenly appearing from out of nowhere, Ruth Drew actually seemed to swoop down upon the man and girl. Almost immediately she took tight hold on Jack.